Say · Do
One standard for 1.6 million residents. Another for 117 holes.
Every leak fixed across 121,780 Phoenix households would save what the six courses use in a single year.
Both sides of this comparison come from the City and from filings the City makes to the State.
Groundwater
Sixteen times over
Phoenix’s drinking-water system draws just 2% of its supply from groundwater — 40% comes from the Colorado River, 58% from the Salt and Verde rivers, per City of Phoenix Water Services, July 31, 2026. The six golf courses the City owns lean on groundwater sixteen times as heavily.
groundwater share of supply
groundwater share, 2000–2024
28,116 acre-feet pumped since 2000. Bars are scaled to the larger share. The City’s 40/58/2 drinking-water split and the courses’ irrigation-supply percentages describe different systems with different denominators.
Cave Creek Golf Course has run on groundwater at 99.9% every year for twenty-five years — the only one of the six to run on a single source for the entire period.
Eight miles apart
A purification plant on one end of the road. Zero reclaimed water on the other.
Phoenix is retrofitting the Cave Creek Water Reclamation Plant with reverse osmosis and UV advanced oxidation to purify wastewater to drinking standard. Eight miles away, the golf course that shares its name irrigates with water that was already drinkable.
Direction of travel
Residents went one way. The courses went the other.
Used about 29% less water in 2019 than in 1990.
From 3,311 acre-feet a year in 2000–2004 to 3,632 acre-feet a year in 2020–2024 — including a peak of 4,073 acre-feet in 2020, during a declared drought.
Phoenix remains in Stage 1 of its Drought Management Plan: education and conservation only. Stage 1 places no restriction on the courses’ irrigation.
On the record
“Solving the Colorado River crisis demands a fair, basin-wide solution in which every stakeholder is asked to sacrifice.”
“Phoenix is prepared to use less Colorado River water, but it is wrong to lay a disproportionate share of the burden on Arizona.”
“We may need to use some of the water we have stored, accelerate investments in future supplies and work together as a community to reduce demand.”
Twenty-five years of golf course water use equals about 12.5% of the City’s reported stored underground supply. The City says it has banked roughly 700,000 acre-feet underground; the six courses have used 87,826 acre-feet since 2000.
What peer courses already do
Reclaimed water is not a proposal. It is standard practice.
Golf courses can irrigate with treated effluent that is not fit to drink and has no other use. Many in Arizona do. These six report none.
The annual household water of 2,108 homes.
Enough for 7,528 households.
Illustrative figures applying published reclaimed-water shares to the courses’ reported use — not a City projection, and not a GOOD|GOAT proposal for how much the courses could actually convert. Phoenix-area and Prescott AMA shares are from 2018 reporting.
What we’re asking
Adopt and publish a reclaimed-water transition plan for the six courses the City owns.
This is GOOD|GOAT’s position, not a finding. Phoenix-area courses already average 21% reclaimed water. Prescott AMA courses average 75%. These six are at zero. Matching the Phoenix-area average alone would free 738 acre-feet a year — the annual household water of 2,108 homes.
The City is asking residents to fix leaks while the courses it owns irrigate with drinking-quality water eight miles from a plant built to recycle it. The plan should say which courses convert, on what supply, and by when.
JUL 31, 2026
City of Phoenix Water Services news release: the Mayor and Water Services Director address Colorado River supply cuts, the City’s drinking-water source mix, stored supply, and Stage 1 drought status.
AUG 20, 2026
GOOD|GOAT publishes this comparison and calls on the City to adopt a reclaimed-water transition plan for its six golf courses.
Notes & sources
- All golf figures are Arizona Department of Water Resources filings for the six courses the City of Phoenix owns, 2000–2024, as compiled in GOOD|GOAT’s summary analysis.
- One acre-foot equals 325,851 gallons. The household equivalent of 0.35 acre-feet per year is an analysis assumption, not a City figure.
- The City’s 40/58/2 drinking-water split and the courses’ irrigation-supply percentages describe different systems with different denominators.
- All six courses are city-owned. GCU Golf Course is operated by Grand Canyon University under a thirty-year operating agreement, and Papago by Arizona State University.
- City figures are from the City of Phoenix Water Services news release of July 31, 2026, and the Mayor’s Save Water Pledge.
Course-by-course totals, source mix, turf intensity, methodology, and four downloadable CSVs.